Are you wondering about the importance of bankrolling during the holiday season? Well, put yourself in the place of a customer and wonder what you would do on a holiday?
Sleeping, shopping, going out, partying, something similar?
eCommerce shopping is one of the most probable activities that a person does while laying in the comfort of their bed! A global data and insight firm, Netscribes predicts a rise of 11.3% in the US holiday eCommerce sales. The last year 2020, marked a rise of 8.2% in these sales. Be one of the next to benefit from the sales boost this holiday season!
Considering the past two years of Covid-19, many businesses experienced immense losses while many closed their doors. Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States, too was concerned about the closure of one-third of small businesses. In light of the decline in sales, business and marketing efforts to increase sales can be heard loud and clear. Amid this, the holiday season shows up with a ray of hope. There are ways for you to make profits from these holiday sales, but the question is how? How to boost holiday sales? Well, you're in the right place. We have got you covered!
The blog defines the best practices for holiday sales. Implementation of the suggested practices will not only make your business more successful but will also bring in a holiday traffic surge. From local and small businesses to the big eCommerce giants, these techniques will help you to recover most of your pandemic losses and will help you to reach new heights.
We will discuss the top 4 marketing strategies that have proven their worthiness. Read on to know how they can prove worthwhile!
How to Attract Customers?
Getting customers to visit your site is the first step in getting them to make a purchase. Given the shopping choices, in order to get customers to your site, you must have something different or unique to attract them. Let's take a closer look at how you can compel a customer to come to your site only.
Offer referral discounts:
Often, customers are interested in making a purchase but are unaware of your site. You can make use of your pre-existing customers to your benefit. A referral offer is a process of marketing in which you reward people for bringing new/more customer engagement to your site with the means of personal or public marketing and sourcing. This strengthens the customer-brand bond and also helps to bring new customers on board!
A personal referral offer from Amazon, “Get a referral credit in 7 days once the referred new Amazon Prime member’s order is shipped” is a perfect example. 78% of B2B marketers accept that referral programs lead to excellent leads at the same time, 54% believe that referral programs have a lower cost-per-lead than other marketing channels.
Product EMI:
“I haven’t received my salary yet. It would have been much better if the sale lasted longer!”. This is a most common though ignored customer problem. Product EMI, if offered, would be one of the best customer support ideas. Also, offers like, ‘Pay after you receive your salary!’ can be an effective solution. This will add up to customer satisfaction and customer experience.
For perfect eyes, a perfect site:
The first thing a customer notices is your website. And the saying, ‘First impression is the last impression’ can work here, given the customer's shopping choices. Develop and update the landing page of your site. For making a site attractive, the sky's the limit. Remember to set a call to action.
Meanwhile, your content can bring more audience. Post furnished and refined SEO blogs to get more traffic, ultimately leading to a holiday traffic surge.
Optimize your devices:
In the era of smart devices, do not forget to design a mobile-friendly website. Make sure your website contains the best visuals. You should be able to operate the same from anywhere at any time to answer the queries of your stakeholders.
Customer interaction:
Finally, customer interaction is the key to customer attraction. Following are ways for generating greater customer interaction:
Social media management:
The best way of customer interaction nowadays is by maintaining your social media handles or pages. Presence on every social media platform has now become a necessity. Being active means being interactive. Understand the social media game and manage your profiles accordingly.
Pre, mid and post-purchase Emails:
Customer interaction via emails can help increase sales. Surveys show that 75% of visitors abandon their cart with a motto of future purchase. Pre-purchase emails can help in assisting the customers to buy the products. Moreover, mid-purchase emails can reduce cart abandonment rates and even can help to boost conversion rates.
Calling and informing:
Even today, many customers are not active on social media to catch up to the sales. At this point, a direct interaction via calling can bring new people to your site, increasing the chances of a boost in sales.
Customer Commitment
Having attracted a customer to your site, you now have to mold him to make a purchase. How can you commit a customer to your eCommerce shop? The answer is, customer engagement is the key to customer commitment. And how can you bring customer engagement? By adding to customer experience and by giving them ultimate customer satisfaction.
Freebies and giveaways:
As customers, we always look up to free products. The syllable is so attractive that many people tend to buy an unnecessary product just in order to get a free one. You can use this technique of marketing to attract customers and boost holiday sales.
As per Booz and Co., a consulting firm, the proportion of sales from promotions and discounts as a percentage of overall sales has increased from 25% to 30% over the last two to three years. Freebies and giveaways can boost holiday sales, so why not make use of them?
Visual effect:
One that catches the eye gets the most sales. Visual effects get public attention and also add up to customer experience. Moreover, it adds to their recall value. 90% of the information reaching our brain is visual. Use this information to your advantage. Use pictures, images, videos, and even virtual reality to attract customers’ eyes and make them commit to your product.
Customer reviews:
Many customers take a step back and abandon their cart only because of poor product reviews. You need to have a system of customer interaction through which you can deal with customer problems regarding the product they bought. Ask them about the defect they found in the product. Try to solve the issue. It is often said that “Customers are the King”. Solve their issues, and manage the good customer review section. This will reduce cart abandonment rates and will also help in increasing visitor conversion rates.
To be prepared is half the victory:
Make sure to get prepared before the sale starts. Prepare your catalogs, offers, emails, newsletters, promotions, blogs, and customized letters. People always look forward during the seasons and holidays for the discount. In fact, they wait all year for these sales. Build rapport with customers and keep them engaged with theme-based or festive based marketing strategies.
Boost Customer Experience
You would be lucky enough to get a purchase from a site visitor but to convert this visitor into your loyal customer is where the role of customer experience comes into action. Customers stick to a brand only when they feel an attachment with the product and brand. You can create this attachment only by giving them a personalized experience adding up to their satisfaction.
Special Offers for Special Customers:
Reward your brand-loyal customers with gifts, vouchers, and special discounts. This helps you to maintain customer relationships and gives you more trusted buyers. Make them feel appreciated and encourage them to browse your whole catalog. To keep customers loyal is even harder than finding new ones. They are like assets, remember to treat and retain them.
Have potential offers for future potential customers. Customize your offers according to products, purchases, and catalogs.
Ensure your reliability:
Zig Ziglar has often said, “You don't build a business, you build people, then people build the business.”
Make sure your staff, business, and website can handle the seasonal traffic. Your business should be capable of meeting the increase in demand for products. Staff should be trained at best to handle the rush of shopaholics.
Review previous data:
Take a quick but detailed scan of your last 2-3 years data of sales, marketing, purchase, and other spendings. This will help you to make your strategies better and success-oriented. Keep precautions for COVID-19 and plan your black Fridays and other offers with enough safety measures accordingly. Be prepared for unknown surprises!
Providing facilities is the priority:
Customers can get a product from different sources but the facilities and customer support are what they expect from a brand. This helps them to get attached to the product. These facilities you provide can help you to create your brand value and equity thus will help you to increase holiday sales, not just this year but in all the future years. Some customer-support ideas like return and replace products, AI or customer help via call and interactive mail, pay on delivery, and many more can help you in this process.
How do you promote yourself?
Famous Czech writer, Milan Kundera has said, “Business has only two functions: Marketing and Innovation”. The innovation part is already done, now is the time to promote and market your product. Remember the rule of sales, the more you promote, the more sales you get. Marketing and promotion witnesses about a 25-30% rise in conversion rates. It’s clearly comprehensible that marketing leads to sales but the question is how and where to promote? We have the answer to all your questions!
Collaborations and Promotions:
Collaborate with the brands of your niche and start a sales business together. Collaborative business helps to widen the customer size and helps in increasing sales.
Also, promotions on different social media channels work wonders. Especially paid promotions on YouTube can bring a greater size of customers under you. You would ask how?
A number as big as 5 Billion youtube videos are watched every day. You can reach out to top channel holders on YouTube and collaborate with them. They will promote your product on their channel returning great customer conversions resulting in a holiday sale surge. In fact, YouTube and Instagram promotions have turned out more effective than GoogleAds.
Creative Marketing:
The way you present your product plays a major role in increasing conversion rates. Add a touch of creativity and awe to the advertisements and promotions of the sale. You can use jingles and animations. Keep the advertisements associated with the lives of your targeted consumers and create a call to action.
Multichannel Marketing:
In this digital era of the netizen, market your business on every social media platform, use emails, and direct messages. Being active on different channels will act as a right hand for a boost in holiday sales. Surveys show a rise of 300% in return of investment(ROI) due to multichannel marketing.
Go with the trend:
Make sure to advertise on the right platform at the right time. Use trending memes to increase customer interaction and customer experience. These memes will catch the eyes of youth and will give you maximum youth interaction resulting in maximum youth conversion rates.
Where to market?
Keep the target audience in mind and cater to their taste buds with an advanced marketing strategy to increase your sales. Hire professional market researchers and take their help to market and advertise your sale and products. Nowadays, you have a choice to advertise on different platforms but choosing an appropriate platform has turned into a nuisance.
In a Nutshell:
These were holiday sales best practices that you can utilize to gain a boost in holiday sales. The best news is that your customers are eagerly waiting for these holiday sales! The wowblackfriday.com shows that the Black Friday sales itself made $7.4billion marking the biggest sales day ever. Even the average per customer order was 6% up.
Remember customers always have an alternative shopping choice, so make sure to tighten all your ends and bring the most out of these holiday sales by adding up to customer experience and customer satisfaction. Utilize this opportunity to take your business to a new height and set up a new history in sales. We wish you luck!
